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July 2016 marked the launch of ‘visits4u’, an 18 month project that aimed to improve user experience and sustain inclusive design provision across its partners. The consortium comprised of seven partners from six countries: Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Spain and the United Kingdom.

The pillar of the project has been to build capacity of the tourism sector across the partners’ regions through training activities that increased awareness and skills in developing inclusive tourism provision.

Following on from these activities, a series of online tools and resources has been developed, that are available for free via the project’s website:

Many younger people, including students, get a job to pay their way through college and waiting tables, assisting holidaymakers and serving drinks are popular options. For some, the prospect of continuing their fledgling hospitality career into adulthood, isn’t one they would contemplate. However, when you stop to think about it, there are myriad potential benefits of remaining in the hospitality and tourism industry, long-term.

Today, architects should not consider accessibility as a set of technical answers but as an architectural desire which gives everyone the feeling of being the same.

I am inspired by the principles of Universal Design, a method of designing accessible and inclusive spaces and environments suited to all users, regardless of their needs, size, age, motor, sensory and mental abilities.

For more than 15 years, I have been helping professionals in the hotel and tourism industry to develop comfortable and accessible rooms where it is pleasant to stay.

It simply requires ergonomics that respects comfort, safety, simplicity, ease, but certainly not in response to excessive standardization that has been frozen for over 50 years! According to my international experience as a wheelchair user, 90% of hotel rooms reserved for people with reduced mobility (PMR - Personne à mobilité Réduite) are only accessible with pain.

As part of a Memorandum of Understanding signed by EDF and the Airports Council International (ACI) EUROPE last year, we organise the Accessible Airports Award. This is a yearly award that aims to honour the best airport in Europe in terms of its level of accessibility as well as the range and the quality of the assistance services that it offers. The award is also intended to encourage other airports to continue their work on removing the barriers that people with disabilities and persons with reduced mobility can still face when travelling by air.

Photo (EDF). Albert Prévos, Member of the EDF Executive Committee and President of the French Council of Disabled People for European Affairs (CFHE) hands over award to Larnaca Airport representative.

We are dedicated to providing our clients with a hassle-free and enjoyable travel experience when they travel to Spain. As part of our broad range of services for disabled travellers visiting Madrid, we offer Personal Assistance Services (PAS).

Since 1999, ReadSpeaker has developed text-to-speech solutions to bridge the digital divide and make online content accessible to a broader audience. It is an easy-to-use and practical complement to organic web accessibility, a requirement for many organizations.

ReadSpeaker Enterprise Highlighting instantly creates an audio version of the text on websites and mobile applications for those with low vision, learning disabilities such as dyslexia, senior citizens, and others who are on-the-go and would prefer to listen from their portable device. For example, tourism websites that are speech-enabled by ReadSpeaker offer another way of accessing information about a destination, and it also helps to hear the names of cities or monuments that you might not otherwise know how to pronounce. As with everything that improves accessibility, it can potentially help everyone.

As part of its missions, the Paris Convention and Visitors Bureau pursues a policy that consists of developing tourism in Paris that is adapted to everyone, of making it more attractive, and of making it easier for people with disabilities to come to Paris. In order to do this:

Do you want to grow your accessible tourism business? Do you want to understand more about the market of disabled people who travel? Do you want to create messages that resonate with them? This offer is for you.

European Network of Accessible Tourism partner, Martyn Sibley, has spent his whole professional life using digital marketing strategies to support disabled people. Having faced the many difficulties in this field he has co founded Disability Horizons, Accomable and Accessible Traveller (plus he's advised multiple travel, media, charity and technology organisations).

Now Martyn has teamed up with Pantou.org - The European Accessible Tourism Directory, to deliver a one-hour webinar on his top digital marketing tips. In only one hour you can gain a better understanding about:

In the past, travelling from point A to B could be a tiresome enough job, let alone traveling abroad.

Today, wheelchair users and other travellers with disabilities have the chance to travel overseas, set sail on a cruise or take a drive across country to Grandmother's house. However, disabled vacationers surely recognise that there'll still be additional challenges while travelling.